Laima Khan
Transplant Researcher
Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences
Tell us a bit about your role
I am a Transplant Researcher looking to new techniques to preserve organs and discover new methods to improve transplantation process. My journey to this stage wasn’t easy due to culture and religious beliefs. Being a woman of colour, I had to work twice as a hard to make myself visible in crowd of high achievers. But my parents stood for me and supported me in my education journey and today, due to my track record, all the women and girls in our family are allowed to study and become a medical doctor like me. I worked and studied at the same time to earn the experience and improve the skills needed to lead me to where I am today.
My role is very important in medical science, as I use my clinical knowledge and access to new technologies to help save lives by making the transplant process safer and more effective.
What is the most meaningful aspect of your work?
The important part of my job is preserving organs in today’s world of organ shortages. Many patients suffer and die due to organ shortage, and devoting my time and knowledge to improve the process and help avoid rejection of transplanted organs is the most meaningful aspect of my job.
Can you tell us about something you've done, contributed to that you're most proud of?
First – due to my love for education and my track record, other girls in several tribes were allowed to study further than year 8, meaning more educated women and a more civilised generation.
Second -- my effort towards fixing a kidney assist machine when the transplantation process went wrong. This allowed us to save the organ for our trials study and for better outcome for patient.
Thirdly: my contribution towards the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, for which I received an award and appreciation letter from former Prime Minister David Cameron
What changes would you most like to see in the Medical Sciences in the next 100 years?
In the decades ahead, the pace of biomedical discovery will accelerate. The health of an individual person will be reviewed with increasing precision from the molecular level, to the genomic level to the organ level and by interactions with medications, nutrients, the microbiome, therapeutic devices, and the environment. This precision medicine will become possible because of huge data sets on large populations, with millions of characterizations of each person.